Preface to The McDaniel Report

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In the Fall of 1992 I heard the news: NASA was about to launch a new mission to Mars. The Mars Observer spacecraft would arrive at its destination in late 1993. The news of this launch stirred my memory. In 1987 I had read about an investigation of possible artificial objects on the Martian surface. The evidence had been some photographs taken by the Viking Mars probe in 1976, one of which bore a remarkable resemblance to a humanoid face. My curiosity was aroused. Would the Mars Observer be photographing the "Face" and other objects thought to be (possibly) artificial?

I began searching for information about the Mars Observer's photographic capabilities and the mission plan in relation to the suspected Martian landforms. At first I turned up very little, but in the course of my search I came across an article written by Erol Torun, a cartographer for the Defense Mapping Agency in Washington, D.C. The Torun article, "The Geomorphology and Geometry of the D&M Pyramid," was a geological and cartographic analysis of a massive pyramid-like mountain located near the "Face" on Mars. This object had been named "The D&M Pyramid", after its discoverers, Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar, who first called attention to its possible artificiality in their ground-breaking monograph Unusual Mars Surface Features.

I was impressed by the care taken by Mr. Torun in analyzing the possible geological explanations of the object, giving reasons for their inadequacy, and then proposing a reconstruction of the original shape based upon cartographic measurements. If Torun, who has a background in geology as well as cartography, was correct about the object's original shape, there would be a very high probability that it is an artificial construction.

About that same time I came across a copy of the revised (1992) edition of The Monuments of Mars by Richard C. Hoagland, which gives a narrative history of the research on the anomalous objects located in the Cydonia region of Mars. In an epilogue to the new edition, Mr. Hoagland set forth a disconcerting picture of the current situation vis-a-vis the Martian landforms. According to his account, supported by copies of letters from key individuals associated with NASA, NASA had no intention of targeting these possibly artificial objects--despite the fact that the Mars Observer spacecraft carried a sophisticated new camera capable of achieving resolutions from five to thirty-six times greater than the original Viking photographs.

Furthermore, all photographs from the Mars Observer mission, except for a few selected by NASA for publicity purposes, were to be subject to a six-month "black box" period due to an unprecedented proprietary contract between NASA and the camera operator--a period during which, given modern technology, any photographs taken of the objects could be altered, "misfiled," or simply lost. At the very least, the public could be kept from knowing more about these objects--and even whether they had been photographed--for as long as six months of "processing." And since the Mars Observer mapping mission was to last two Earth years (one Martian year), if images of the landforms were not obtained until near the end of the mission, public information regarding the controversial objects could conceivably be delayed for longer than two years. NASA, it seems, had rejected out of hand the research carried out by independent investigators, but also had never carried out any significant research of its own, into the nature of these mysterious objects.

[Author's Note (Dec. 2000): Eventually I found that many crucial items in Hoagland's material are, in my opinion, seriously flawed, although his account of NASA's behavior is still, in my view, accurate.]

In the conflict between NASA's position and that of the independent researchers, I saw a perfect example of the kinds of questions about knowledge that come up in the study of epistemology, which is the philosophical theory of how we come to know, and of whether we can know. I took the key works on the subject --Hoagland's The Monuments of Mars, Randolfo Pozos' The Face on Mars, Dr. Mark J. Carlotto's The Martian Enigmas, and Unusual Mars Surface Features by Vincent DiPietro, Gregory Molenaar, and Dr. John Brandenburg--into my classroom and used examples from these books to illustrate fundamental problems in epistemology.

My initial approach was one of considerable scepticism. Certain questions remained about the methodology involved in Erol Torun's measurements of the D&M Pyramid on Mars; and Richard Hoagland's seminal work on the subject seemed, at first glance, to be a mixture of tantalizing fact and imaginative speculation. Even the first book on the Martian anomalies, Unusual Mars Surface Features by DiPietro and Molenaar (joined later by John Brandenburg), included some questionable speculations. These I set out to clear up by direct communication with the investigators.

Over the course of the investigation my appreciation for what these researchers had done, and the underlying scientific integrity of their work, began to grow. I found that the occasional faults in their work were far outweighed by the solidity of the data and their responsiveness to the needs of what is, after all, the first study of its kind in history.

As my study continued, I became aware not only of the relatively high quality of the independent research, but also of glaring mistakes in the arguments used by NASA to reject this research. With each new NASA document I encountered, I became more and more appalled by the impossibly bad quality of the reasoning used. It grew more and more difficult to believe that educated scientists could engage in such faulty reasoning unless they were being governed by an irrational prejudice, or even following some sort of hidden agenda.

Eventually my original naive view that all NASA scientists were sincerely interested in the truth was utterly shattered when I discovered a most shocking piece of disinformation: one written not by an obscure NASA Public Information employee, but by a prestigious member of the 1976 Viking Lander Imaging Team, Dr. Carl Sagan. Dr. Sagan's contribution to the subject could not be interpreted as mere scientific bungling; its author is too knowledgeable for that.

[Author's Note (Dec. 2000): A full account of this remarkable piece of apparent disinformation, which appeared in PARADE magazine, is to be found in chapter eight of The McDaniel Report in the section "Dr. Sagan's Lunar Tale."]

I became so concerned (one might better say alarmed) that I began to sketch out the issues raised by the situation, at first thinking of writing only a short paper on the subject. The "short paper" gradually expanded into the present report. It became a project lasting almost a year. During this time, I communicated with all the chief independent researchers, in some cases forwarding drafts of my work and receiving their feedback.

In July, 1993, during the final three weeks of writing this report, the situation at NASA began to fluctuate almost daily. Careful study of NASA's ambiguous responses to citizen inquiries just prior to the loss of the spacecraft strongly suggests that NASA, becoming aware of the intensity of public opinion and also of the impending release of this report, was trying to create the appearance of accommodating the concerns of the public while at the same time leaving its underlying position essentially unchanged.

As I believe the story told here will show, there is good reason to question NASA's motivation and credibility regarding this issue. The concerns raised here affect the future of the nation's space program, the methodology employed in SETI research (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), and the proper role of government in relation to the public should evidence of extraterrestrial activity be discovered by a government agency. There is a great deal at stake, not only scientifically and philosophically, but also economically because of the tremendous impact on the space program and space-related industries that could result from a publicly-acknowledged discovery of this magnitude.

Against the importance of the issues raised here there is the natural tendency on the part of the public to classify reports of "men from Mars" as Wellsian fantasy. Seventeen years of ridicule by NASA and a small handful of scientists whose field of expertise is severely limited has encouraged many people to ignore the data and dismiss the AOC hypothesis as a joke.

For example, when a copy of this report was shown to a group of editors from the Washington Post, one of them glanced briefly at one of the photographs, said "Oh, that's just a mountain," and closed the report without reading a single word of the text. Confronted with nearly 200 pages of analysis and data, knowing nothing about the details of the images and not being an expert in image interpretation, he nevertheless preferred to rest his judgment on his own uninformed impression rather than intelligent consideration of the facts.

What is remarkable about this is that the Washington Post is not exactly noted for avoiding stories about controversial issues--except, apparently, when the issue involves the likelihood of intelligently constructed artifacts on another planet than the Earth. This topic, it seems, disturbs people to the point of irrational denial.

In order to read this report without bias, a person must be willing to entertain, at least tentatively, the possibility that extraterrestrial artifacts might be found on planets in the solar system other than the Earth. As the report will show, this possibility has been given credence by reputable scientists and has been seriously considered in reports commissioned by NASA itself. Ruling out such a possibility in advance constitutes a priori reasoning (reasoning from prejudice rather than from the facts). Encouraging such faulty reasoning seems to have been the mainstay of NASA's approach to the topic. One purpose of this report is to expose and correct that faulty reasoning.